Rotational components of surface strong ground motion

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Abstract
Rotational components of seismic waves have been estimated using the strong motion array in Taiwan, SMART‐1. The inner rings of accelerographs, covering an approximately circular area of 3 km2, permit a decomposition of travelling waves with wavelengths in the range 0.5 to 5.0 km and frequencies from 0.1 to 5 Hz.Rotational components of the strain field, obtained from station pairs and averaged over the array using stacking techniques, were computed for five different earthquakes with Ms magnitude 5.7 to 7.8, and epicentral distances 6 to 84 km. The results indicate peak rotation values about a vertical axis on the order of 4 × 10−5 rad at an approximately 2.5 s period. The measured values for pure rotation and rocking are in agreement with the spatial coherency structure observed in these earthquakes. For comparison, significant effects to engineered structures generally appear when curl u > 10−4 rad. The estimates are important for design of scaled engineered models for soil‐structure interaction experiments.

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